UK to close all schools from Friday as confirmed COVID-19 cases exceed 2,600

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that all schools in the country will close from Friday after health authorities confirmed a death toll of 104 and a total of 2,626 infected cases of the novel coronavirus across the country.

Noting that the government needs to keep the National Health Service (NHS) going to fight COVID-19, Johnson said children of health workers and police officers, among other key workers, together with the most vulnerable children, can still go to school. Earlier Wednesday, health authorities said 32 more people have died after testing positive for the virus as of Wednesday.

On the same day, local authorities of Scotland and Wales announced that schools will close from Friday. In Northern Ireland, schools closed at 5p.m. (1700GMT) Wednesday for students, although teachers are understood to be attending for another two days, according to local media.

The latest move came as confirmed cases worldwide passed 200,000, and more than 8,000 people have died. The World Health Organisation and its partners are organising a multi-country study, known as the Solidarity Trial, in which untested treatments are compared with each other to show which treatments are the most effective.

The British government had been reviewing calls to close schools, in part because of the impact on the NHS, as many of those needed on the frontline are also parents that will need to stay home to take care of their children.

Some headmasters said that they are faced with plummeting staff levels as teachers self-isolate and dozens of schools have been forced to close after staff and pupils were diagnosed with COVID-19.

The British National Education Union has written to the prime minister, calling for schools and colleges to close.

Andrew O'Neill, headteacher of All Saints Catholic College in west London, said that student attendance had dropped to below 50 percent.

All non-urgent operations in England will be cancelled for months in a bid to relieve some pressure on medical staff amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The NHS is postponing all such operations from April 15 at the latest, for three months. Simon Stevens, NHS head in England, said on Tuesday that hospitals have been asked to send home as many patients as possible to free up a third of the 100,000 general and acute beds in England for COVID-19 patients.

Health chiefs have asked staff to achieve this by cancelling elective operations, speed up discharges and use the private sector where possible.

Meanwhile, Britain's major supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Aldi have put rationing restrictions on certain items that are in high demand over the growing fear of coronavirus as shoppers flock to stores and leave shelves empty.

The British government has urged the public against panic buying, insisting that the supply chain remains resilient and steady.

The pandemic is also "an economic emergency," Martin Wolf, a veteran British journalist who focuses on economics, said in a signed article on the Financial Times. "The pandemic has already squeezed both supply and demand."

Johnson said earlier this week that the virus was spreading faster in London than other parts of the country, and people in the capital should take extra note of the new rules.

Downing Street on Wednesday did not deny that extra measures were coming specifically for London.

A spokesperson said: "We have set out the steps necessary at this point in time. But we will be guided by the scientific and medical advice to make sure we take the right steps at the right time."

"We will do whatever it is required to keep the public safe," said the spokesperson.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)